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A new detailed picture of the infant universe, where red indicates warm spots and blue for the cooler areas. Image credit: NASA/WMAP Click to enlarge Scientists have gathered new evidence that supports the inflationary theory of expansion thanks new data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The spacecraft has been making continuous observations of …

Continue reading “Early Universe’s Rapid Expansion Confirmed”

Europeans have begun funding what will eventually become the world’s largest telescope: the Square Kilometre Array. The first step is a four-year study that will consult astronomers and engineers from around the world to decide what will make the best design. It will then be developed in stages, with parts coming operational over the next decade, and completion by 2020. Once complete, this extremely sensitive radio telescope will help probe the nature of dark matter, confirm Einstein’s predictions about relativity… and let us watch television shows broadcast from nearby stars.

An international team of researchers have developed a computer program that simulates the growth and expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang, including the formation of galaxies, clusters and quasars. The “Millennium Simulation” used 10 billion virtual particles of matter, and traced their movements in a 2 billion light-year cube of space as the Universe evolved. This simulated area contained 20 million virtual galaxies, and accounted for dark energy expanding the Universe, cold dark matter, and regular matter.

It’s amazing thing but many amateur astronomers (and possibly the occasional professional as well!) don’t have the big picture on where the bulk of the visible light in the universe comes from. “Sure” you say, “from the stars!” Ah but that’s the easy answer. In fact the more you learn about light, the less straightforward such an answer becomes. In this article, Jeff Barbour probes a little deeper and the implications could light the way to an extraordinarily new appreciation for the “star stuff” seen all around us.

Researchers from Caltech have looked deep into space to a time when early material in the Universe was swirling towards the creation of galaxy clusters and superclusters. They did their measurements using an instrument in the Chilean Andes called the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI), which looks at the Universe when it was only 400,000 years old – a time before galaxies, stars, and planets had formed. By watching the motion of this material as it began forming larger structures, the researchers were able to confirm that dark matter and dark energy were having an effect even then.

Image credit: SDSS Since the discovery several years ago of a mysterious force, called dark energy, which seems to be accelerating the Universe, astronomers have been searching for additional evidence to either support or discount this theory. Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have found fluctuations in cosmic background radiation that match the repulsive …

Continue reading “Further Evidence Found for Dark Energy”